It's too bad we still have to use racial designations. Until we can stop doing so, both quotas and affirmative action will exist. We've got a long way to go ... and apologies to Jerry Reed, but I don't see a short time to get there.

Here is the thing that pisses me off the most about people who are the most angry over "affirmative action" especially when it comes to things like college applications (and Lugs, I realize this is separate from your point and not directed at you):

"Legacy" admissions, like the one George Walker Bush used to get into Yale, make up something like 30 percent of the students accepted into those prestigious schools. Quotas, based on race, make up something like 10 percent.

Yet no one every bitches and bitches about all those kids who only get into Yale because dad went there.

Here is the thing that pisses me off the most about people who are the most angry over "affirmative action" especially when it comes to things like college applications (and Lugs, I realize this is separate from your point and not directed at you):

"Legacy" admissions, like the one George Walker Bush used to get into Yale, make up something like 30 percent of the students accepted into those prestigious schools. Quotas, based on race, make up something like 10 percent.

Yet no one every bitches and bitches about all those kids who only get into Yale because dad went there.

Click to expand...

The difference is that most people believe that the Constitution says:

"...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Equal protection isn't that we are all treated equal, it's that you cannot deny equal protection because of certain characteristics, like race, national origin or religion.

As to legacy, the argument is that being a legacy admission has nothing to do with race. Not really true since it's only been 40 years since women, blacks and jews have been regularly admitted. But barrack Obama's children will get preferential treatment at Columbia because he's a legacy. And these days, African American children of middle class backgrounds whose parents are college educated may receive preference over children, regardless of race, whose parents never went to college.

One reason those of us of the Jewish faith so object to Affirmative Action and quotas, is 40 years ago, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, had quotas for Jews, they only let in, for example, 5 Jews per class, even when Jewish applicants were more qualified than white admittees. With Affirmative Action, Jewish applicants can be more than qualified again, yet be denied admission. Ask the Asian American kids being excluded from Stanford and Cal. because they don't want 30-40% of the entering class to be Asian what they think of Affirmative Action.